29.6.06


Life's Good...hopefully.
Woah. I just did my final exam for my Internet Fundamentals module for army. Basically lots of LAN stuff like cables and how to connect blahblahblah and binary numbers and ethernet and protocols and routers, ip addresses, TCP/IP, etc etc...overall quite a daunting subject. But i managed to get a 92%...when everyone else was getting like 60-70%. Lol. Just goes to show how good i am at...you guessed it: guessing. Like how is it POSSIBLE that Greg can be such a wonderful top A student right? My luck was really in it today..then again the test WAS rather easy for some reason..just that you'd think the super smart/hardworking dudes like jason, leonard, junjie and gang would've done better.

Anyway, there's a chance that we'd get to go out of camp today!! Haha twice in a week..my friend was like "Wah kanna..life's good man" as if he didn't believe it. Hohoho..and tomorrow i get to go home!! Yippee..

This course has been...very fun i'd say. Practically heaven-sent. We've got a female officer for a course commander who understands that we're not EXACTLY here on our own free will, and she gives us lots of respect and freedom. We've got interesting and RELATIVELY more useful lessons here and we manage to do a lot and yet have sufficient time to rest and relax. For example, we finished our exam with pretty damn good results and we now get to surf the net!! And after being here for 4 weeks, i've managed to learn quite a bit about MS-DOS..like how to shutdown other computers in the same network and to turn off applications using a remote host...let's hope mum never learns how to do THAT. ^_-

Oh yah, by the way...it's pretty old news apparently, but just yesterday i saw jaclyn and diana on SGGIRLS.COM...0_0. Like oh my god. Turns out the pics were posted pretty long ago by DAN. Man...what a perv...a perv who likes girls 3 years older than him...LOL ok i'm kidding...ALTHOUGH i don't recall ever uploading MY sister's friend's pics on sggirls.

Well, gotta go soon so i'll stop writing here...next week i think we're bringing Digimons to camp...whaha EXTREMELY childish of us, but well, this's the time when we're taken away as young men in the prime of our lives and turned back into boys, so...Let's just hope this all ends soon and we can all grow up again.
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18.6.06


the family's back..
Hmm...u know dory i can't remember what you wrote either...LOL. Ahwell. Well studying sucks. But i still can't wait to start university! I suppose the grass is always greener on the side (although i don't exactly look at the armour infantry and guards soldiers with much..envy...0_o)..or maybe it's 'cos ANYTHING gets boring if you keep doing it over and over...absence of studying makes the heart grow fonder for it, etc etc.

Anyway, quite big things going on in my home..basically my sis and my dad are back. My sis just finished her gruelling undergraduate course in U Chicago after a few years (soon it's gonna be back to work at A*Star), and my dad's moved from Philips to another company, so it's goodbye to being posted overseas after like 7 or 8 years. And spending more time in his other homes too.

So yesterday, i awoke to find carton boxes stacked up in my home. My sis moved back a few days earlier and now my dad's stuff had just arrived. Boy is the house MESSY. Before this, i'd always thought that our home had too many TVs, too many books, too many CDs, too many cameras, too many amplifiers and speakers, too many clothes, too many shoes...all in all too much JUNK. Like we've got a treadmill and a table soccer machine even though our home isn't really big. So things were practically OVERFLOWING.

And now...woah. My room is quite big, but there's 5 filled luggage bags and filled plastic bags strewn around the place, 2 cupboards overflowing with clothes (some of them not really mine as well), 2 guitars, a huge display cabinet with Management books that are definitely not mine, huge speakers that i'm not using and a (roughly) 25inch LCD TV that probably will never be plugged into my room. Most of the stuff's just there for storage in any case.

My parent's and sis's room are faring just a little better. But it's quite chaotic downstairs. No, catastrophic's a better word. Carton boxes galore with eating utensils, dishes, CDs, books, paintings, etc, that my dad moved from his other home. And with all the laptops brought back from overseas...i think i can hazard a guess...that we've got about 6 laptops and 3 desktop computers in the house!! Just the four of us..and technically i only use 1 desktop for all my stuff! I think we'd be able to make over ten thousand bucks if we ever decided to hold a garage sale. No, make that twenty. Thirty. Madness.

Maybe i should help the house do some advertising...anyone wants a 35+inch Philips flat screen TV that is currently NOT in use? A JVC cassette recorder? Or how about a philips DVD recorder, which comes with like 80 or so gigabytes to store your favourite TV shows? Perhaps an amplifier and speakers set would suit your tastes more? How about an HP laser scanner? Or perhaps picture frames of me when i was a little twerpish..errr 0_o...i take that back. Or maybe not. A hundred bucks for each photo..? That alright with you? What the heck, i might as well ask....

Does anyone wanna buy a 256MB LEADTEK NVIDIA GEFORCE 7800GT EXTREME (overclocked) GRAPHIC CARD??? Among the LATEST in PC graphic card technology...you probably can't find a single PC being sold at Harvey Norman that's got a graphic card that has any SQUAT on this baby..all for a sweet $240! Negotiable! For $300 I'll even add in 2 pieces of CL2.5 DDR400 512mb Kingston RAM worth over a hundred bucks!!! Plug it into your computer for a sweet 1GB of RAM! Graphic card for use with PCI-express combatible systems only. Compatibility issues also significant for the RAM. Products have been in use for only 5months. Its former owner takes VERY good care of his stuff. Lol.

Hmm, well that's enough of that. Book-in time's at 10pm, giving me about...3hours of free time left. I have NO idea how to spend it. Besides tidying up the house that is. Hmm..a bit out of point but i have to say that i really MISS all my VJ schoolmates..and those times when Greg was vain, loud, wacky and didn't lead that much of an introverted life. Hopefully i'll be asked to go back to school to collect a prize or something for College Day so i can see some of the dudes and dudettes again...or i fear i'll NEVER go back to VJ EVER..except maybe in the distant future, when everybody's changed.

Then there's those who aren't in VJ...other...people...that i haven't seen in a LONG while. I've got NO idea how i'll ever see them again. Unless i arrange an outing. And Greg's hopeless at doing things like that. Especially now. Well..that's a problem for another day. Next week, to be exact.
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17.6.06


...no title
Woo...controversy..got this off infowars.com.


N.Y. report denounces shock use at school

Scott Allen / Boston Globe | June 15 2006

New York education officials issued a scathing report yesterday on a Massachusetts school that punishes troubled and disabled students with electric shocks, finding that they can be shocked for simply nagging the teacher and that some are forced to wear shock devices in the bathtub or shower, posing an electrocution hazard.

The report, based in part on an inspection last month of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, portrayed a school in which most staff lack training to handle the students and seem more focused on punishing bad behavior than encouraging good acts.

The investigators said some forms of discipline, such as a device that delivers shocks at timed intervals, appear to violate federal safety regulations, and students live in an atmosphere of ``pervasive fears and anxieties."

The report, denounced by Rotenberg officials as biased, is expected to play a key role next Monday when education regulators in New York are scheduled to vote on whether to severely restrict the use of painful punishment on students from New York.

Two-thirds of Rotenberg's students are sent from New York. The inspectors said they had notified officials in Massachusetts and at the US Food and Drug Administration about possible violations of state and federal safety rules.

There have been increasing allegations of abuse at the Rotenberg Center in recent months.

They include several assertions that students have been badly burned by the shock devices, known as graduated electronic decelerators. The Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection Commission has received 22 allegations of abuse at the school since January, including 12 that involve injuries. Rotenberg officials have steadfastly denied the charges, but commission officials say that at least two have been substantiated.

Yesterday, a lawyer for the school, Michael Flammia, said the New York report grossly distorts what goes on at the school, which is often used as a place of last resort for students with autism, mental retardation, or behavioral problems. School districts in several states, including Massachusetts, refer students to Rotenberg after other methods to control their behavior, such as hospitalization or drugs, have failed.

The school has about 250 students, about half of whom wear electric shock devices that teachers can activate around the clock.

``These findings are completely false. They are the product of a biased review team sent by the New York State Education Department for the specific purpose of making derogatory findings" about the center, said Flammia, who denied that students are forced to wear shock devices in the shower.

He also said that New York officials are mistaken in asserting that the school is violating FDA or Massachusetts rules.

Flammia noted that New York inspectors had given the Judge Rotenberg Center high marks for safety last September, but he believes they turned against the school after the publicity surrounding a lawsuit filed this spring by the mother of a New York student.

Some parents of Rotenberg students rallied behind the school, as they have in the past, saying that most people don't understand how serious their children's problems are. The school, which costs states and school districts more than $200,000 a year per student, helps students who have failed everywhere else, they say, and turns to shocks and other punishments only if less painful methods fail.

``This school has saved my daughter's life," said Marcia Shear of Long Island, whose 13-year-old daughter, Samantha, used to punch herself in the head so often that she detached both retinas.

After she received a few high-level shocks, Shear said, the self-abuse stopped. ``I am livid at these people and pieces of garbage who think they know what they're doing. Let them come and sit with my child and go through what I've gone through for 11 years."

The 26-page New York report intensified a debate over the Judge Rotenberg Center's methods that has gone on for much of its 35 years. The latest controversy began in March, when Evelyn Nicholson of Freeport, N.Y., went public with a charge that her son, Antwone, had been mistreated at the school, where he was shocked 79 times over 1 1/2 years. She initially consented to the procedure to curb her son's aggressive behavior, but said she changed her mind after Antwone became increasingly desperate to get away.

``There's no education in what's happening here," said Ken Mollins , a lawyer representing the Nicholson family, which is suing New York for $10 million. ``The head of this institution calls this therapy. I think this is more like a domestic torture chamber."

The New York inspectors found that more than two-thirds of the direct-care providers at the Rotenberg Center have completed only a high school education, which they said ``in many cases . . . is not sufficient to oversee the intensive treatment of children with challenging emotional and behavioral problems."

They also noted that only six of the 17 clinicians who oversee mental-health care at the school have a license in psychology.

The inspectors said the school appeared to violate FDA regulations in several ways, including a policy that allows the parents of students to administer shocks to students after only minimal training. The New York report also said that the school appears to violate Massachusetts regulations that allow painful punishments only for ``extraordinarily difficult or dangerous behavioral problems," noting that they witnessed one student who was threatened with a shock after sneezing in class. School officials said no shock had been given in this case.

Finally, the report raised concerns about students' nutrition because the Judge Rotenberg Center withholds food as a punishment. The report found that one New York student was in a program where he could be denied up to 25 percent of his normal food intake.

New York Deputy Education Commissioner Rebecca Cort said the report painted a much darker picture of the Rotenberg Center than last year's review, because the state took a more in-depth look, including a surprise inspection that showed the school's practices are a lot different from written treatment plans for students.

Rotenberg's Flammia said the school was never given a chance to review the report before it was made public and he said the school would demand a fair chance to respond. He warned that if New York students are denied access to the Rotenberg Center, the state could be sued by parents of children who hurt themselves as a result.

Supporters of a bill in the Massachusetts Legislature to ban the use of electric shocks on students said they hoped the New York report would give new momentum to their efforts to force the school to change its methods or close. A proposed ban was written into the state budget passed by the Senate, but the House of Representatives has not taken a position.

``It's troubling that it's necessary for New York officials to point out the violations of Massachusetts law taking place at this facility," said state Senator Brian Joyce, the Milton Democrat who has led the effort to ban electric shock.


Yikes.

Can't really say much 'cos i have NO idea what these people's lives are like, but it really shows things on the surface can be very different from what lies beneath.
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3.6.06


Outfield life stops. Today.
Woah. Signals is slack. Dumb, but slack. Dumb in that they had us report on Monday (i reported on tuesday though) just to give an extremely short briefing and make us sign forms to take leave till thursday. Like why couldn't they just ask us to report on Friday morning...such a waste of time!

And today we got to book out at 7pm. Haiyoh..i don't enjoy having to move from house to house just for half a day's activites you know. Anyway I'm currently in some Infosys course..it's the one that's gotta do with setting up signal/computer networks..basically more physics and less...physical stuff. Since i wasn't present on MOnday, i had a choice of whether i wanted to do brainy and office-y kinda stuff or carry like heavy signal sets and march outfield.

Hoo boy. Tough choice that was. 0.o

Anyway, about my hip injury, i actually went to see a specialist about it on Wednesday...said it wasn't curable and might get worse in the future, but shouldn't be more than a discomfort if i do daily stretching, pilates, etc etc. Then i was referred to yet another physiotherapist..this time some Bodyworks thingee at Tong Building. The physio, Sheryl, seems quite well informed and is a little more..hands on...than the SAF woman. And she was able to point out overly tensed lower back muscles that i didn't realise till now.

Then came the massage. With the woman telling me that i didn't "have to worry about being shy" because a guy was doing it. Weird thing was, i felt much more comfortable around the physio than the masseuse guy. Well, not exactly a weird thing, considering the kinky music playing and the guy telling to do slow, well, erm...screwing motions while lying on my side as he pressed down hard and gave me a rub from my butt all the way to the side of my knee. 0_o Was a little disturbed.

A lot of guys would've been freaked out i think, but i'm not homophobic..kinda gotten over that already. I guess the only explanation's that most guys would've been EXTREMELY freaked out.

Ok i'm gonna stop here...will write more tomorrow...HOPEFULLY. I've got a whole bunch of army excerpts crap written over the past 3 weeks but i assume no one wants to read about it so i don't have to spend precious time typing it right? Right? Yup, i guessed as much. Hohoho...
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Gregory Ang
{♠gRêCkÖ♠}
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